Neptune will be at opposition on September 16 (at 22h Universal Time).
See the end note about enlarging illustrations.
You can see that, at the time of our picture, the planet is about to be overtaken by the “anti-Sun,” the point 180° from the Sun. Nearby, distributed along the ecliptic, are Saturn, the asteroid Juno, and Jupiter, whose opposition dates are Aug. 14, Sep. 7, and Sep. 26.
Neptune and Juno have the same brightness: their magnitudes at their oppositions are 7.8 and 7.9. That is well below the naked-eye limit of around 5, so you’ll need optical aid to see either the 254-km-wide asteroid or the far more distant 49,000-km-wide planet.
The comparative sizes of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are shown in one of the illustrations in our Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.
Neptune was king of the sea, and of earthquakes. Perhaps he was a merman. Matthew Arnold’s poem “The Forsaken Merman” is one of those pieces of literature I cannot read aloud because I cannot suppress a sob: it ends
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.
Earthly monarchs department
News stories refer to Elizabeth II as “The 42nd of a line of kings and queens of first England, then Britain, then the United Kingdom, since William the Conqueror.” Why begin with 1066 and that usurper? The first king of the Anglo-Saxons, that is, of a united England, was Alfred, from 886. The tyrant styled Edward I was really Edward IV.
Among all these hereditary heads of stare, the only interesting minds may have been those of the first, Alfred, and the latest, Charles III. (That may be a minority opinion.) But he will now have to keep his thoughts about many issues to himself.
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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format. You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor. One way: right-click, and choose “View image” or “Open image in new tab”, then enlarge. Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it. On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers). Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.
Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after publishing it. If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version. Or you can click ‘Refresh’ to get the latest version.
This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Considering their keen British nationalism strange that they begin with any monarch of England.The powers that be in the archipelago seem fixated on Britishness and the UK so by rights they should begin from the Union of Crowns when England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales became the UK super state itself a mini version of the EU the very same people left .
For the curious about 1066 and All That : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1066_and_All_That And it is available on line and for download for free. Enjoy! Remember, too, that beginnings have to start somewhere and sometime so that no one is ever satisfied completely! ; > )